Love the CS Lewis quote. I think he may be generalizing because of his strong Christian influences when he says the following:
quote:
But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others...
It is my opinion that he is correct in his first statement that in order to measure something you need something to compare to, hence my statements about having a metric. I think that his second sentence is problematic in that moral standards are always dependent on the situation. If a real Right exists it is unclear to me that he or anyone knows what it is.
Allow me to offer an example using one of the most controversial moral issues which seems to pervade the United States: sex. There seems to be some moral standard in the US that dictates that nipples are an immoral thing to see. This is clear from the hysteria which surrounded JJ’s wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl. What is not clear is why this moral standard needs to be in place. There are cultures where people go around wearing very little clothing and they don’t seem to be adversely affected by it. Once again you run into relative morality. Or perhaps what CS Lewis is saying is that those things which are relative aren’t truly moral issues?
As far as establishing a moral code of that which increases happiness I think this is inherently flawed as is shown by your examples. I think that the morality proposed by shrafinator is a good starting point:
schrafinator writes:
My morality is based upon doing and supporting that which harms the fewest people and helps the most.
And we can look at the homosexual marriage example you gave. Having homosexual marriage illegal infringes on the rights of al the homosexuals who want to get married (I would say that this harms them). Having homosexual marriage legal would make some people uncomfortable because they believe that it is a sin. This however in no way infringes on ANY of their rights or their ability to live their life as they want so I would say there is little harm done in that situation. Since my metric is reducing harm and helping people, having homosexual marriage illegal while heterosexual marriage is legal is immoral. This is not related to how many people are made happy by the idea.
If you can propose some system of absolutes which is devoid of ambiguity I am dying to hear of it.